Our Voices

Rosh Hashanah 5786 | 2025

This sermon was long in the making. It comes from being born just 19 years after the liberation of the concentration camps, and it comes from being aware for all my life of antisemitism but never experiencing it in the ways that are common now. It comes from never wanting to hide my Jewish identity or removing my chai necklace when I was growing up. It comes from 31 years of serving the Jewish community as a rabbi and observing the many ways we live our Judaism—sometimes quietly, sometimes more loudly. It comes from living in an era that challenges our Jewish identities in different ways, many of which we are not prepared to withstand and that leave us feeling a range of emotions—anger, sadness, confusion, cognitive dissonance, and heartbreak.
    I’ve been reflecting on my own history with antisemitism, as well as how it has affected our people throughout history, because we are facing a new and different kind of antisemitism right now. One that requires new and different outward responses from us to the world, but also and perhaps even more importantly, requires us to inwardly reconnect with our Judaism in all its complexity and beauty.

In 2025, being Jewish looks and feels different than it did ten, twenty years ago. The past two years of war in Israel and Gaza have changed the way the world looks at Jews, at Israelis, at Zionists—which is to say those who support the right of Israel to exist on some portion of its ancestral homeland. 
For the first time, I hear parents share with sadness that their middle school children are afraid to let anybody know that they are Jewish. That cultural and heritage nights at our local public schools are fraught, and it can feel too risky and vulnerable to staff an Israel table. 

Among those of us in the Sholom community, we hold many different backgrounds, experiences, leanings, and feelings about being Jewish and about our connections to the land of Israel. No matter where we personally stand, I want to remind all of us of the current reality of Jews in America and how we got here. 
After the attacks of October 7 two years ago, we were in mourning. We were scared, pained, and heartbroken. When the cruel and sadistic Hamas attack happened, we turned to each other and our tradition for comfort and hope. And many community members from outside of the Jewish community stood with us. But so much feels different since Israel retaliated with air strikes, a massive ground war, and new assaults in new areas—a war that shows no signs of winding down.

Now, we struggle with concern about Israel’s future, despondence over ever achieving peaceful relations with Israel’s neighbors, anger and fear because of the rightward extremism of Israel’s leaders, and an Israeli government that absolves itself of accountability. Our hearts break for Israelis and the loss of life and well-being for innocent victims of the conflict.

But it's important to note that Jewish isolation and vulnerability didn’t start with October 7. It has been relentless since 2017, when white supremacists marched in Charlottsville, chanting “Jews will not replace us.” A record number of antisemitic crimes—assaults, harassment, and vandalism— have occurred ever since: The Tree of Life, Chabad of Poway, Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, and just this year, the setting of an arson fire at Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's residence while his family was asleep inside after their Pesach seder, the firebombing of a weekly "Run For Their Lives" march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, and the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky after leaving an AJC event for young diplomats at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. 

Sadly, we’re familiar with antisemitism throughout our history from lived experiences such as our grandparents’ generation, when the problem was Jews who presented in ways that telegraphed their Jewishness. We’ve all heard stories or directly know people who faced obstacles to white shoe law firms, certain country clubs, and more. And going further back, we remember the horrors our people faced during the Crusades and Inquisition in medieval Europe, which set the stage for our people’s greatest calamity, the Holocaust. 
While this history is real and painfully difficult, it also teaches us important lessons—that we are an incredibly resilient people with a religion that is worth loving and defending, and that like many things in society—then and now—antisemitism continues to morph, to change, to call on us to confront its newest incarnation head-on and with different conversations. 

In a new book, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who, Blame, Shame, And Try to Erase Us, author Sarah Hurwitz explores how antisemitism has shaped Jewish identity throughout history and right now, and how we might reclaim our tradition. Recently, she spent a lot of time on college campuses speaking to Jewish students and learned that what many college students are experiencing is both very old and very new. 

The problem today, she explains, is Israel. Today, Jews are being called upon to be an anti-Zionist and renounce Israel, or face condemnation and in some cases, exclusion. The subtle, or not so subtle message in many circles, not just college campuses, is that we’ll let you be Jewish, we won’t discriminate against you for that, you just must reject Israel, you must carve that out of your Judaism.  She refers to this as a kind of conversion away from the Judaism most of us have grown up embracing. A Judaism that saw Israel, in all its imperfection, as an important and valid part of our modern Jewish identity. 

In her book, Hurwitz writes, “I now understand how the story of Zionism has been stolen and rewritten by others such that it is no longer about a people who rejected their role as history’s scapegoats and rose up to claim safety, autonomy, and power in a state of their own. Instead, it has been turned into a story about a people who epitomize the worst evils of humankind, all of which are embodied in their state, the very founding of which was a sin.”¹ 

Now that we recognize what this new antisemitism looks like and is asking of us, what do we do? I would remind all of us that we know better than to let the worst of what has ever been said about Jews, and Jewish sovereignty, become our truth. Jews are not perfect, Jews are just people who are Jewish, and people aren’t perfect. And Israel isn’t perfect. Israel is just a country, and countries aren’t perfect. But I, like so many Jews and others around the world, place on Israel’s young shoulders the ideals we hoped for. We would quote the prophet Isaiah, that Israel would be a “light unto the nations.” We thought the Jewish state would be a country unlike any other. Those unrealistic expectations have led to us, and the world, to judge Israel in a way that we don’t judge other nations. 
Many, many countries around our world were founded, just like Israel, as the result of war, changing rulers, and displacement of peoples. Israel has not fulfilled its promise yet as a country, but I’m invested in it and am rooting for it to get there. The United States, founded by displacement of many Native peoples, hasn’t fulfilled its promise yet either. And I’m invested in it and am rooting for it, too, to get there.

     When I read Sarah Hurwitz’s book and how she refers to this new antisemitism as being a kind of conversion away from what we know to be a fundamental part of our religion—a desire for a Jewish homeland—I was struck by her use of the word “conversion” in this context. A conversion should be a clear, heartfelt choice made by an individual out of a desire to find something that feeds their soul, aligns them with a people, and is made of free will, without any feeling of being coerced or of being denigrated, if they were to make a different choice.

I know this because it’s my honor to work with members of our community who decide to convert and join our Jewish people. They do so for a variety of personal reasons, and it touches my heart so deeply because, despite our people’s difficult history, all of us here today know how beautiful and special Judaism is. As I reminded us today not to let other people define the wholeness of what it means to be a Jew in 2025, I want to leave you with a reminder of what we have. These are words from four people who have chosen to convert to Judaism. All these people will become Jewish between this month and December of this year and all began their studies with me after October 7. Theirs is a conversion not away from a part of Judaism, but toward the wholeness of what it means to be part of the Jewish people. 

    One person wrote, “The most beautiful part of being Jewish is, that despite the years of persecution and struggle, at the center is still mitzvot. One might think that after the thousands of years of suppression, the Jewish spirit might be hardened. Yet, that is not what I see and witness. I see a community and a people who still want to do good deeds and have intertwined these mitzvot into almost every tradition and celebration in the religion.”
    Another shared many things she loves about Judaism: “A welcome connection when I first walked through the doors of PTS; encouragement of continuous study and questioning; a deep sense of unity, community, and shared heritage; joy, peace and happiness on Shabbat when singing and praying together; the love I feel for the traditions, holidays, and rituals, and the love and interest my kids have in Judaism.” And this soon-to-be convert went on: “I get giddy at even the thought of being a part of our beautiful Jewish community—of being called child of Abraham and Sarah and joining the thousands of years of history and family that comes with that.” 

And another expressed it this way: “I’m grateful that when I walked through the synagogue doors, looking for a spiritual home, I was met with kindness, compassion, and genuine curiosity; that we not only welcome ideas and questions but also welcome all people as being made in the image of God; that we recognize suffering and take responsibility to do something about it; that we embrace the fullness and complexity of what it is to be human. 
“I’m grateful for a tradition that celebrates humility and encourages learning; that we can hold space for seemingly contradictory truths to exist at one time; that we celebrate the cyclical nature of life and recognize our indebtedness to the past and responsibility for the future; that we are called to be present with each other to celebrate and to grieve. 

“I’m grateful Torah reminds me to love my neighbor— v’ahavta l’rei-acha kamocha —even when it doesn’t always feel like my neighbor loves me. I’m grateful that the acceptance I have found in the Jewish community isn’t because of any special merit on my part, but because that is who we are.”
I, too, am so deeply grateful for who we are.

I am reminded of a midrash about the crossing of the Sea of Reeds. In this imagining, it wasn’t that the waters parted and the Children of Israel easily stepped across the dried shore. Rather, the writer imagines the waters raging, cresting high above their heads as the Israelites crossed. So how did they do it? How did they decide to enter the tempest, to face the danger of the moment? Each person said to the other, “Hold on and don’t let go!” Each Israelite crossed the Sea of Reeds while holding on to another person, hand in hand. No one would let another person loosen their hold and slip away. 

And that’s what we need today to get to the other side of this moment. We have historical precedent to lift us and guide us. Our people have been facing obstacles since the beginning of our peoplehood. And that’s one powerful source of strength and resilience. 

I would ask that as we begin these Days of Awe, we make a conscious decision not to let Israel slip away, not to let our peoplehood slip away, not to let each other slip away. The only way through is by holding hands. So, let us take the hand, or the arm or shoulder of those next to us, as a gesture of support and strength. We will walk through this wilderness, and we will be stronger, and we will flourish on the other side. 
Cain y’hi ratzon—So this may be God’s will.

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¹ Sarah Hurwitz, As A Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us (New York: HarperCollins, 2025), 187.